with historical and critical notes, and a comprehensive glossary

INTRODUCTION.
which left much, long- entwined with the holy faith we now maintain, strongly imbuing
the poetic genius of the Gaelic bards. The wild imaginations of the enthusiastic Celts,
led them to indulge in many superstitious ideas, but if, like other Pagans, they openly and
emblematically admitted a plurality of Gods ;
the belief in one supreme disposer of human
events was the fundamental creed of the bardic hierarchy ; and if the people were
persuaded of the truth of metempsychosis, or transmigration of spirits into other bodies,
the more enlightened portion believed the immortality of the soul, in a state of happiness
or misery. In the work of that intelligent Roman soldier and historian, Marcellinus, who
was well acquainted with the Gauls, he thus speaks : "the Druidae of a higher polish and
imagination, as the authority of Pythagoras decreed, being formed into societies or fellow-
ships, were addicted wholly to the consideration of matters of divine and hidden import,
and despising all human things, they confidently affirmed that the souls of men were im-
mortal."* The simple and sublime doctrines, if it is permitted so to designate them,
which the Druids taught, were to reverence the Deity— to abstain from evil, and to be-
have with bravery; and they enforced their observance with unremitting energy. To the
Almighty being, they paid adoration under the open canopy of heaven, esteeming it un-
becoming to confine within a covered edifice, the worship of Him who created all things.
At His mysterious shrine—circular, as the type of eternal duration,—they invoked divine
favour, under the striking symbol of the resplendent sun, the apparent source of universal
life. The appellations, Be 'il and Grian, or Granais were applied to the glorious lumi-
nary, and they are still used by the Gael, although they do not attach to them those
unchristian ideas, which darkened the mind of his ancestors, or perhaps being at all aware
of the origin of terms formerly repeated with feelings of gratitude and veneration.f Many
superstitions which yet maintain a hold on his imagination, are traceable to the mysterious
dogmas of Druidism. Feelings carried along from ages the most remote, imbued the
minds of the Gaelic poets who indulged the fond persuasion, that the aerial spirits of
departed friends hovered near their earthly relatives, rejoicing in their success and happi-
ness, warning them of impending misfortunes, and ready when meeting death, to bear their
spirits on clouds to a happier region. This cannot be called a debasing belief.
The only names which the Gael yet apply to Heaven and Hell, proclaim their origin
in days of Paganism. The ideas concerning Flath-innis, the island of the brave or noble,
which was supposed to lie far distant in the Western Ocean, and Ifrinn, the cold and dis-
mal isle in which the wicked were doomed to wander, in chilling solitude, so inconsistent
with, and diametrically opposed to the Christian faith, could never have been imbibed
from the sacred records of divine will. The numerous imaginary beings, with which the
Celts filled earth, air, and water, were admirable accessories to the poetic machinery ;
they were perhaps originally deified, and although not yet discarded from popular belief,
they are reduced to the less awful forms of phoeas, fairies, beansiths, Glasligs, &c.
By all people, heaven has been pictured as an indescribable refinement, of all that im-
parts pleasure to the inhabitants of earth; and it is otherwise impossible to form any idea
* Book xv. eh. !l. + The Komnns, or Romanized Celts, niiseil ultars to them.